


Deserved

by Zucarbaby



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dean Winchester Deserves to be Happy, Fix-It, I Love You All, I just had to, Multi, Sam Winchester Deserves to be Happy, The Winchesters Deserve Better (Supernatural), We deserve better, destiel will live, keep fighting keep living, they deserve better, you deserve better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:53:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27648461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zucarbaby/pseuds/Zucarbaby
Summary: Everyone can still get what they deserve.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester
Kudos: 16





	Deserved

The Impala picks up speed, Chuck's screams remain in the dust, along with the past, along with the despair of an empty world. Sam feels as if he is waking up from one of those nightmares that really make you believe that a multi-ton monster was sitting on your chest. Inhale after inhale, the air fills the burning lungs, the engine roars. Sam is afraid to hope, but he can't help himself. Together with oxygen he breathes it in, its incomparable smell. Hope. It smells like early morning and sunshine, like Dean's shirts when Sam, hugging him, rubs his nose against his shoulder. Now he wants it too - to rub his nose against his shoulder. But even without touching him, Sam knows that his shoulder is so tense it would feel like stone. Dean looks stone all over - his face, his hands, his fingers gripping the steering wheel. Sam wants to say things that can't be said. He wants to say the words now, before they turn out to be reality. He hopes they turn out to be reality. He bloody hopes they do. Because the air behind him is electrified. He feels this power with the back of his head and the tiny hairs on his neck stand on end. Jack is also breathing deeply. Jack barely fits in the backseat with all his might, with all his light. But Sam is silent. He is afraid to scare off the promise that envelops the world rushing outside the window. The promise that everything can still be good, that everyone can still get what they deserve - another chance. That the people of this planet will go back to their half-eaten burgers, unsaid words, unfinished stories. Sam believes in Jack like he could never believe in God. After all, he knows about his mercy not by hearsay, he knows about his kindness not from old books. If someone in the Universe is capable of a miracle, then it's Jack, their Jack. And in Dean's voice Sam feels his own thoughts, his own fears, his own hope intoxicated by the sunny sky. It burns not so brightly, not so dazzlingly, it's fragile, fearful, but it is there. And for a moment, the stone Dean becomes his own self again. Sam doesn't need to ask just as he never needed to ask before. He knows how the world becomes, how much it empties, grows dim, how the edges of the sky peel off when Cas's presence does not illuminate it. As if everything holy, all the grace in the world, he wears in the bosom of his trench coat and when he leaves, he takes it with him. Sometimes it seems to Sam that Cas is the only _real_ angel. And not because he was created that way, but because Dean sees him that way.

A smile appears on Jack's face, so familiar, so reassuring. Sam looks at his closed eyes and tries to imagine the whole world under those trembling eyelids. Sam tries his best to imagine Eileen. Life returns abruptly, with a wave of noise flooding thoughts, every corner of consciousness is drowned in a myriad of other people's inhales and exhales, and they all feel like early morning, sunlight and Dean.  
Jack looks so tenderly pleased, even happy, and it seems to Sam that he looks more like Cas than ever, although he has never seen such an expression on Cas's face before. Dean looks at him like he's noticing it too, invisible cracks running down his stone shoulders - or maybe he's noticing something else.  
Sam has a lump in his throat, because this is goodbye, as much as they would like to just take him by the sleeve and pull, just take him home. But now Jack's home is every corner of the world and every breathing person. Sam swallows the bitterness of tears and bites his cheek, catches a painful smile before it escapes his lips - he is also a home for Jack, just as much as Dean is. And Sam wants to think that although Jack will treat everyone and everything in the world with equal love, in his immense heart there will still be a little more of this love just for them.  
He walks away with a calm, confident step and dissolves in sparks of light and Sam has seen a lot in his life but for some reason this moment imprints in his memory like nothing else. And now he and Dean are back on the road, just the two of them, _just the two._ And this is both a blessing and a torture. Sam rubs his nose against his shoulder anyway - Dean doesn't flinch, doesn't move away, he's warm and still very tense. Sam wants to ask him "Don't you notice how bright the sun is, what a grace?" But he doesn't say anything and just watches as the strip of the road disappears under the hood of the car.  
Eileen calls a few hours later. Her voice is shaky with emotion and her breath hitches, and Sam can't remember ever hearing anything more beautiful. Except perhaps her soft laugh when she finally hugs him. They return to the bunker in a hurry, speeding, driven by the north wind. Sam is not surprised to find a trench coat slung over the back of a chair. He expected him almost as much as Dean. He believed in him almost as much as Dean.

"Dean!"

Footsteps are heard in the corridors.  
Cas is the first to appear in the doorway, his expression is unfamiliar to Sam - Dean steps out from behind him and looks almost like he's ten years younger. Everything stone softened, everything rough became gentle. He's so handsome it kind of hurts to watch. Sam wants to say how happy he is to be here and to see him like this but thoughts are lost in Cas's tight arms, and Sam is not sure but it seems as if something has changed in him, indefinable, barely noticeable, but irreversible. As if there is less of the heavenly and more of the earthly. He no longer smells like electrified air before a thunderstorm, he smells of a long day, of a man and a little of Dean. He smells of home and Sam is afraid to say it out loud, like everything else. As if some part of him still believes that all this can dissolve right in his hands. But this does not happen and the hands of the clock keep going.

Beer bottle caps come off with a pleasant hiss. Eileen manages to catch the foam, but Cas doesn't and it pours into his palm and the cuffs of his shirt. Dean snorts and grabs his bottle tighter, lifts it over the table. There is a familiar smile on his lips and Sam hears his words in his own head way before he says them.

"To family!"

The necks of the bottles meet with a clink and the cold beer burns the throat a little. Sam leans back in his chair and feels His presence. Everyone feels His presence. Warm ease swirls under the ribs. Sam holds his breath as if mesmerized but the next second Dean kicks him with his foot under the table.

"Get us more beer, Sammy."

And just like that, the incredible moment is gone - what is left is an incredible life.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for possible mistakes, English is not my first language.


End file.
